Tuesday, February 03, 2009

I work about 40 miles away from where I live - which makes me next to ineffectual when a family crisis arises. By the time I find out about most problems, the problem has probably already been taken care of.

Bridget points out that I'm also ineffectual at solving family crises that occur right in front of my face. Which is true. Personally, though, I think this has less to do with my crisis-handling abilities and more with the types of crises that are thrown my way.

For instance, a voice mail that I received from my wife went something like this:

"Your six year-old son Julian has been taken down to the principal's office because he was dancing on the cafeteria tables and yelling for his friends to hit him in the balls. Call me as soon as possible."

I considered calling Bridget for a moment. Then I went to lunch at Pollo Tropical.

Before you judge, let me explain my reasoning. First, Pollo Tropical has this really amazing chicken soup with corn, plantains, soft pumpkin and yuca. I don't even know what yuca is, but I do know that God meant for it to be in soup. I had been thinking about a bowl of that soup all day and it would have been both disappointing and nutritionally unsound if I had skipped lunch to discuss my child's testicles.

Second, it seemed to me that the principal had swooped in and swiftly averted any possible testicle crisis. Bridget, didn't, for example, leave me a message that said, "Come quickly, your son was kicked in the groin by, like, 20 kids. He needs a teste transplant and you're his only donor match."

So, I relaxed and had some soup. Later, I got the whole story from Bridget which, as I guessed, was different from the voice mail message. It seems that Julian got in trouble because of two separate incidents in the cafeteria. In the first, Julian decided to impress his easily amused friends in the lunch line by shouting out,"Hey, dudes, don't hit me in the balls!"

Don't laugh. I hear Ashton Kutcher got his start the exact same way.

The second incident, which occurred ten minutes later and in front of the same adults, involved what Bridget says the principal described as Julian "gyrating on the tables like he was in the "High School Musical" movie."

Now that things are calmed down, I'd like to apologize to the state of Florida for my son's inappropriate behavior in school. But I do have two other comments.

I enjoyed the fact that the principal insisted on using the word "gyrate" to describe Julian's dancing. Because of his word choice, I will always picture him as Ed Sullivan and Julian as a really short, curly-haired Elvis. I appreciate that more than you know.